HO! FOR THE PLATTE!
Uncle Dick excused himself from the party for a time in the evening,
having some business to attend to. He left the three boys in their room
at a hotel, declaring they all would rather sleep on the houseboat with
Johnson.
"It's mighty quiet on this trip," said Jesse.
"Nothing happens?" said Rob, looking up from his maps and the _Journal_
which he had spread on the table. "That's what the explorers thought
when they got here! They wanted to start in killing buffalo, but there
were no buffalo so close to the river even then. All our hunters got was
deer; they lay here a couple of days and got plenty of deer, and did
some tanning and 'jurking.' Clark says they took this chance to compare
their 'instrimunts,' and also they 'suned their powder and wollen
articles.'
"Clark killed a deer below here. Drewyer, one of the best hunters, had a
fat bear and a deer, too. And Lewis killed a deer next day, so the party
was in 'fine Sperrits.'"
"Oh, so would I be in fine 'sperrits' if I could kill a deer or so,"
grumbled Jesse. "Now look at us!"
"Well," went on Rob, "look at us, then. See here, what Clark says about
it:
"'The Countrey on each Side the river is fine, interspursed with
Praries, on which immence herds of Deer is seen. On the banks of
the river we observe number of Deer watering and feeding on the
young willow, Several killed to-day.... The Praries come within a
Short distance of the river on each Side, which contains in
addition to Plumbs Raspberries &c, and quantities of wild apples,
great numb{rs} of Deer are seen feeding in the young willows and
Earbarge on the Banks and on the Sand bars in the river.'"
"I didn't know that deer liked willow leaves," said John.
"I didn't, either, but here it is. And that was June 26th, when the
grass was up. I've even known some naturalists to say that deer don't
eat grass. We know they do.
"But what we want to get here is the idea that now the expedition was
just coming out of the hills and woods into the edge of the Prairies.
Across these Prairies and the Plains came big river valleys that led out
West toward the Rockies. If all that had been hills and timber, no road
ever would have got through. It was the big waterways that made the
roads into all the wilderness; we certainly learned that up in the Far
North, didn't we?
"So here was their crossroads of the waters, at old Independence, which
now is Kansas City. Not much here, but a natural place for the Gate to
the West.
"Clark had a good real-estate eye. He says:
"'The Countrey about the mouth of this river is verry fine on each
Side as well as north of the Missourie. A high Clift on the upper
Side of the Kanses 1/2 a mile up, below the Kanses the hills is
about 1-1/2 Miles from the point on the North Side of the Missourie
the Hills or high lands is Several Miles back.... The high lands
come to the river Kansas on the upper Side at about 1/2 a mile, in
full view, & a butifull place for a fort, good landing place.'
"He couldn't spell much, or put in his punctuation marks, but he
certainly had a practical eye. And I reckon the first beginnings of the
city were right then, for the _Journal_ says, 'Completed a strong
redoubt or brestwork from one side to the other, of logs and Bushes Six
feet high.' Yes, I suppose that was the first white building here at the
Gate.
"It's pretty hard to find any new part of the world to-day. Yonder runs
the Kaw, leading to the Santa Fe Trail--and I'll bet there's a thousand
motor cars going west right now, a hundred times as many cars each day
as there used to be wagons in a year!"
He closed his book for the time. "Maybe that's what Uncle Dick wanted us
to get in our heads!" said he.
"Some country!" said Jesse; and both John and Rob agreed.
When their leader returned a little later in the evening, the boys told
him what they had been doing.
"Fine!" he said. "Fine! Well, I've just telegraphed home that we're all
right and that we're off for the Platte to-morrow, early."
"That's another old road to the Rockies," said Rob.
"One of the greatest--the very greatest, when you leave out boat travel.
The Platte Valley led out the men with plows on their wagons, the home
makers who stayed West. You see, our young leaders were only
pathfinders, not home makers."
"And a jolly good job they had!" said Jesse.
"Yes, and jolly well they did the job, son, as you'll see more and
more."
John was running a finger over the crude map which he and Jesse had been
making from day to day. "Hah!" said he. "Here's the big Platte Valley
coming in, but no big city at the mouth."
"Oh yes, there is," corrected Uncle Dick. "Omaha and Council Bluffs you
can call the same as at the mouth of the Platte, for they serve that
valley with a new kind of transportation, that of steam, which did not
have to stick to the watercourse, but took shorter cuts.
"It's odd, but our explorers seem even then to have heard of a road to
Santa Fe. They also say the Kansas River is described as heading 'with
the river Del Noird in the black Mountain or ridge which Divides the
Waters of the Kansas, Del Nord, & Collarado.' No doubt the early French
or the Indians confused the Kaw with the Arkansas.
"Enough! Taps, Sergeant! To bed, all of you," he concluded; and they
were willing to turn in.
In the morning early they were at the dock, and were greeted by Johnson,
who, sure enough, had the gasoline cans filled and most of the heavy
supplies aboard. By eight-thirty they were chugging away again up the
water front of the city, their Flag flying, so that many thought it was
a government boat of some sort.
Jesse tried to write in his notebook, but did not make much of a
success, owing to the trembling of the boat under the double power.
"He always says 'we set out and proceeded on,'" Jesse explained. "I was
trying to write how the expedition left the mouth of the Kansas River."
"Look out for 'emence numbers of Deer on the banks,' now," sung out
John, who had the _Journal_ on a box top near by. "'They are Skipping in
every derection. The party killed 9 Bucks to-day!'"
"But no buffalo yet," said Rob.
"No, not till we get up around Council Bluffs--then we'll begin to get
among them."
"And by to-morrow afternoon we'll be where they celebrated their first
Fourth of July. It was along in here. They celebrated the day by doing
fifteen miles--closing the day by another 'Descharge from our Bow piece'
and an extra 'Gill of Whiskey.' I don't call that much of a Fourth!"
John seemed disgusted.
"Well, maybe the soldiers didn't, for they had 'Tumers & Felons & the
Musquiters were verry bad,'" he went on. "I don't think their grub list
was right--too much meat and salt stuff. But from now on they certainly
did get plenty of game--all kinds of it, bears, deer, elk, beaver,
venison, buffalo, turkeys, geese, grouse, and fish. You see, Jesse, they
got some of those 'white catfish' like the last one you caught--a
'channel cat,' I suppose we'd call it. And they ate wild fruit along
shore. I think the hunters had better chance than the oarsmen.
"They saw elk sign not far above the Kansas River, but I don't think
they got any elk till August 1st. Above there they got into the
antelope, which they called 'goat,' and described very carefully. They
sent President Jefferson the first antelope ever seen east of the
Alleghanies. Then they got into the bighorn sheep, which also were
altogether new, and the grizzly bear, which they called the 'white
bear.' Oh, they had fun enough from here on north!"
"Yes, and did their work besides, and a lot of it," affirmed Uncle Dick.
"But while we are comparing notes we might just as well remember they
had some bad storms. I don't like the look of that bank of clouds."
They all noted the heavy ridges of black clouds to the west. The wind
changed, coming down the river in squalls which tore up the surface of
the water and threw the bow of the boat off its course.
"Steady, Rob! Slow down!" called out Uncle Dick, who had begun to pull
the tarpaulin over the cargo. "I can't judge the water in this wind.
_Look out, all!_"
Suddenly there came a jolt and a jar which drove them from their seats.
The propellers had struck a sand bar and plowed into it. Caught by the
wind, the bow of the boat swung around into the current. Careening, the
lower rail went under and the water came pouring in.